Greece seeks greater flexibility ahead of debate on GM crops

France will try to break deadlock with a proposal to allow derogations for specific applications of a GM crop.

Updated 02.03.2014 / 17:02 CET

Greece is pleading with environment ministers from the member states to be more flexible ahead of a debate on genetically modified crops on Monday (3 March).

Member states are divided over whether the European Union should authorise GM crops for cultivation. With Germany abstaining in all GM-related votes, there has been no qualified majority to make any decision on authorisation.

A 2010 proposal from the European Commission sought to break the impasse by allowing member states to bring in national bans on environmental or cultural grounds if a GM crop was authorised by the EU. But this too has resulted in deadlock, and the proposal has not been discussed since March 2012.

Greece, which holds the presidency of the Council of Ministers, put the issue back on the table after a vote earlier this month on a new strain of GM maize resulted in no weighted majority either for authorisation or for rejection.

The European Court of Justice ruled in September that the application for the maize, made by DuPont Pioneer in 2001, had taken so long that the Commission must make a decision within three months.

The Commission says it is now forced to authorise cultivation of the maize – even though 19 of the 28 member states voted against it, along with a large majority of MEPs.

The anti-GM member states – including Austria, France and Hungary – are concerned that the Commission’s proposal for national bans would not stand up to legal scrutiny under EU law or at the World Trade Organization. They say the only way to have legal certainty is if they are allowed to impose bans on health grounds. But the Commission says that would be impossible if the European Food Safety Authority has found that the crop is safe.

Cross-border contamination?

France will try to break the deadlock on Monday with an alternative proposal that would explicitly grant member states the freedom to take decision at the national level on the authorisation and the management of the cultivation of GM crops, whilst keeping a general EU legal framework for authorisation – instead of prohibition measures only.

“The new concept would be based on an authorisatioon procedure at two levels,” the French text says. “At the national level it would integrate the possibility to take into account new criteria for the management or the authorisation of the cultivation of GMOs.”

However the Greek presidency is insisting that its compromise proposal, which is not as drastically different from the Commission’s proposal as the French text, should be the basis of discussion on Monday.

Legality is not the only stumbling-block. Some of the more strident anti-GM member states say that GM crops could be carried across borders in the wind.

Environment ministers will also on Monday discuss the Commission’s recent proposal for a new emissions-reduction target for 2030, of a 40% cut from 1990 levels. The outcome of the debate will feed into a discussion by EU leaders scheduled for the European Council on 20-21 March.

Following the meeting of environment ministers, the UK is hosting a summit of the ‘green growth group’ of climate-friendly member states at the European Parliament. Ministers from Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Portugal, and Romania will attend.

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